A small muscle in the ear that connects the antitragus (small cartilage projection) to surrounding structures.
From antitragus (opposite the tragus) + -icus (Latin nominative suffix). From Greek anti- (opposite) + tragos (goat, used to mean the tragus because of its shape). Named in anatomical Latin in the 1600s-1700s.
The tragus is that little bump you can feel covering your ear canal when you press inward—and there's a tiny muscle right opposite it most people have never heard of, showing how anatomy texts catalog every millimeter of your body.
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